The Star-Advertiser’s woes with its expensive, high-tech printing plant just seem to be going on and on.
This must be a huge blow. The computerized printing operation was built by Gannett for more than $75 million, and was a prize part of the buyout and merger with the old Star-Bulletin.
But, it turns out, there “high tech” can be too high.
At first, the problem was treated in low key fashion.
Here’s the first notice: “”Because of production delays, this morning’s Star-Advertiser will be delivered later than normal and will be a partial edition in certain areas.”
A reader emailed to say that his “partial edition” lacked a front page.
Early Monday morning, a follow-up explanation posted by Frank Bridgewater said that the problems were expected to persist on “subsequent days…until the press problems are resolved.”
And much of Monday’s paper, such as it was, came from the company’s press on the Big Island.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser was unable to print most complete copies of the Sunday edition because of problems with the computers that operate the printing press.
Monday’s paper is smaller than our usual papers, and subsequent days also will have fewer pages until the press problems are resolved. These papers will not include some features that normally appear. Monday’s paper was printed on the West Hawaii Today press on Hawaii island.
Bridgewater’s note also said the full newspaper would be available online.
But yesterday I received this email from a reader describing his experience.
So like everyone else yesterday (Sunday) I only received 1/2 the paper, but I went on line and had the whole edition.
Today (Monday) I received the abbreviated version along with the rest of Sunday’s paper. So I go online, using the papers app, and all I see is what was delivered. So I call the paper and after a 5 minute wait talk to some guy who’s out at the press. He tell’s me that’s all there is, period. I ask him why not the whole paper on line? And I get the same answer. Nothing more was produced-everyone gets the same thing. I don’t get mad at this guy because obviously he’s not the one calling the shots.
Then this:
Issues with the Kapolei press limited its production capability, so Sunday and Monday Star-Advertisers also were printed on Maui and the Big Island. Newspapers from the neighbor islands did not arrive on Oahu until 8 a.m. after their delivery was interrupted when they were grounded due to the storm. The Maui flight carried 40,000 Sunday papers, which will be delivered to subscribers Tuesday who did not receive complete papers Sunday, and the flight from Hawaii Island had Monday Star-Advertisers.
Then, according to KHON on Monday evening, it’s looking like the problems are far from over.
Here’s part of their story.
Officials at the Star-Advertiser say this problem has cost them half a million dollars.
Kennedy said they spent hours on the phone with the machine’s manufacturer in Germany, but didn’t get the problem fixed, so they’re hoping to fly in an expert from Australia to help.
“We’re going to be okay until we have to print Sunday,” he said. “We’ll have to see how it goes. Hopefully, we can get everything up and running,”
Kennedy couldn’t give any guarantee that the upcoming Sunday edition will come out as usual. There are also issues if this week’s edition of Midweek, another property of Oahu Publications, will be printed this week.
The newspaper also prints Midweek, and I learned officials don’t know how they will handle that this week.
It’s hard to imagine the havoc this is wreaking with their business operations, which will have to account for ads not run, newspapers not delivered, etc., etc. And how about the private jobs the high capacity press was also contracted to churn out?
And if the press guy’s statement above was correct, the staff that would normally be churning out a full newspaper daily are not, well, not doing that.
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Not to mention those presses also produce other important material in Hawaii.
This is what happens when A) you live in isolation and B) you have limited local competition. Imagine if Hawaiian Airlines couldn’t fly!!! lol
“With the acquisition of the Advertiser in June 2010, OPI also became the owner of the state-of-the-art Roland offset printing press, the most advanced printing and publishing facility in the country. The RegioMAN presses can print as many as 70,000 papers an hour. It produces the highest quality cold-set printing in Hawaii with crisp, clean text and the sharpest color-photo reproduction on newsprint.”
OPI Rates:
Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Hawaii Renovation
MidWeek Oahu
MidWeek Voice
Metro HNL
Military Publications
USA Today
Street Pulse
The Garden Island (Retail Rates)
Kauai Midweek
Hawaii Tribune-Herald
West Hawaii Today
North Hawaii News
OPI Direct Mail
101 Things to Do Hawaii
Aloha Hilton Hawaiian Village
Aloha Hilton Waikoloa Village
Aulani Magazine
go Kailua Magazine
go Kapolei Magazine
HILuxury Magazine
Ola Magazine
Trump Ho?okipa
Waikiki Magazine
Over all, I think the presses are doing a good job. So much better than the old Star-Bulletin. Remember how junk their photos were? Lol.
The press is 11 years old. Two days of problems out of 4,015 days is a 99.9% success rate. Seems pretty good to me. I find it fascinating how furious folks get when they don’t get their paper that’s delivered to their door for about 50 cents a day(or from what I hear from some people even less than that) For what it’s worth the paper seemed pretty normal today. and so it goes…….
I see today’s online edition is the same as the printed version. I’m wondering why they don’t produce a normal edition for online? Is the computer problem affecting the press also stopping all the downtown computers from working as well?
It used to be that a newspaper did everything they could to put out a paper each day. With the the Internet there is now another avenue to to accomplish this goal. But for some reason they are not doing this.
In Kane’ohe, I received the Midweek in my Monday USPS mail, around midday; and it seemed to have all the usual stuff.
Speaking of publication glitches, I notice that the masthead phrase for this blog remains “Online daily from Kaaawa.” Shouldn’t that be changed? Perhaps there should be a competition to create a new phrase, with a prize like free access to the blog!
Some things are hard to let go of.
“I find it fascinating how furious folks get when they don’t get their paper that’s delivered to their door for about 50 cents a day(or from what I hear from some people even less than that) ”
Then you might not belong in the newspaper business. Elder newspaper readers are not to be trifled with. It’s like arguing with cats.
t: arguing with cats….good one. LOL
Still haven’t received the full Sunday paper, as promised. At least the Long’s ad came in today’s paper.
I’ve still seen nothing about this: the Wall Street Journal has stopped same-day delivery, saying its edition is no longer printed in Hawaii. You now get a day-old paper, which is worthless. Was it printed at the S-A plant? Did that deal collapse? Notice that the Sunday S-A now carries the NYTimes financial page, not the WSJ’s.
Inquiring minds want to know!
Also, MidWeek no longer posts its old, very-readable online edition. Instead, a kind of screen shot version that’s hard to find. Seems the old version was very labor intensive and had little ad revenue. Makes sense, I guess. Everyone on Oahu and Kauai gets MidWeek by mail, so the print ads are widely seen. The only eyes for the online edition would seem to be non-Hawaii people, and they are not using our local advertisers.
Mainland friends have stopped looking for my column because it’s almost an impossible navigation to find it and then you get eye fatigue trying to read it!
Outsiders can’t have the full story about what went wrong and how prepared or unprepared the publishers were for the disaster.
The press itself is an amazing machine, pretty close to rocket science.
We can ask questions, but only OPI can answer, and only if they wish.
I am curious about whether they have backup, spare parts, access to maintenance expertise, etc. It’s tough to do rocket science in Hawaii, which is why I’m skeptical of the state spending any money on a spaceport, for example.
The press probably needs metric screws, and a rocket ship would require MIL-spec parts, and Home Depot just may not have what is needed. So either one keeps spares on the shelf for almost anything that might need replacing or deal with the downtime when there is a failure.
At least there are other presses available to them so a partial make-good is possible.
Whether or not we learn more, this may be a learning experience for OPI management, and they may well take steps to prevent a recurrence.
If we were in the Linotype era one could have enough redundancy and spare parts to keep going, but in a high-tech world there is less redundancy. Given a choice, companies choose to do their high-tech elsewhere. The choice to install that fancy German press should not be faulted, it’s a question of how to keep it going reliably on into the future, assuming it’s not ready for retirement.
By the way, the Kapolei printing plant has other wonders besides the press. The way the newspaper is transported through the facility and assembled into sections and into deliverable papers is a wonder to behold. It also runs (ran?) on soy ink, so no dinosaurs are killed to print our papers. And the plant is amazingly flexible and programmable, able to switch jobs very quickly.
When they fix this, it will be just a bad (and costly) dream.
A tad bit ironic that the “Dear Subscriber” letter notifying us of the subscription-rate increase arrived this weekend.
The WSJ was printed by The Maui News. It was never printed by Gannett or now OPI. I didn’t receive a “subscription increase letter” and I doubt very much anyone else did. I called and spoke with the dept head and asked what the new rate is and he said there has been no rate increase and that was news to him. Perhaps ccc had a promotion deal and that was expiring.
What I found worse than the printing issues was their lack of customer service.
I got half the paper on Sunday, and had no clue of their problems, so I tried the normal drill to report a missing paper, and could not get through to anyone.
The SA did not send me an email to explain the situation (they send me breaking news alerts, and could’ve let many of their reader know that way). I tried their regular customer service line and got the voicemail of someone at New York Life. I tried another number and got the voicemail of Michael at Catholic Charities.
If they had just let me know about their printing problem, through one of the many avenues they had available (e.g., a recording on their customer service line), I’d have been fine waiting for them to fix the problem.
Bob Jones, is http://www.midweek.com/author/bob-jones/ no longer being updated with your new columns?